Friday, July 8, 2011

Fabulous Four Dress up Tea Party

Finally! The recap of the fabulous four dress up tea party we threw, oh 2 months ago now! Sorry for the delay friends who followed along on twitter, between blogger failures and summer this kept getting pushed back.

My oldest daughter was turning 4, and despite being a bit of a Tom boy with lots of boys that are friends she wanted to do a dress up tea party for her birthday. This was of course fueled by a deep and abiding love for Fancy Nancy. So I set off to create a fancy party for her with the help from some great tutorials on the internet and some stellar shopping finds.

The"theme" used loosely was butterflies and flowers. The bonus for this year was her birthday was Easter weekend so there was lots that fit that theme on clearance! I choose to do email invites to say money. I used Punchbowl because they are a bit fancier than Evite and this was after all a fancy party.

I try to plan parties in between meal time if I can to save money, which is so important when your kids birthdays are two weeks apart! So the party was planned for 2-4pm and we planned on just having some tea sandwiches, snacks and cupcakes.

Cupcakes were from an awesome local bakery and were so yummy! They were cream filled like hostess cakes did I mention yummy? Oh and they were pretty too:

I didn’t have a lot of room for food and no one had a tired stand I could borrow. I did look for one at Goodwill and didn’t find it. I saw an ad for Chinet that used the clear crystal cups and plates to make one:

It was perfect for snacks, easy and so fun. I filled the cups with some tinsel fillers.

However, it is completely unstable for toddlers and grown men (it was the grown man who knocked it over- twice). I just balanced everything if I do it again (or if you do it) I would hot glue the pieces together. The cups were filled with snacks- puffs, pretzels, popcorn and gold fish. The middle row was homemade chocolate banana chocolate chip muffins and the top later was this fun find from a local deli:

They were very popular with the girls.

Since it was a tea party we had to have tea sandwiches!

We made simple sandwiches on white bread. We had strawberry and cream cheese, cucumber and cream cheese and peanut butter and banana and used cookie cutters to make them into butterflies and hearts.

We were having the party at home and sine it’s April in Chicago I couldn't plan on being outside. I also didn’t want to spend a lot so I sort out decorations that I could make from my stash of craft supplies.

First up I used almost all the great ideas from this post on a handcrafted party. I have a ton of scrapbook paper that I have not been using so I made these:

I could have made these all day long. I LOVE them. They were so easy and really dressed up my empty walls.

I had a large stash of colored tissue paper (clearance from target!) so I decided to finally try my hand at those gorgeous paper pom pom flowers I have seen all over the blogosphere. I used Martha’ tutorial:

I made one smaller by cutting the paper in half. It was a little too full to get all the petals open but it worked. They were easy as I quickly realized they were just like making the paper flowers we made in grade school!

I picked up some butterflies from Hobby Lobby on clearance and used them in the centerpieces.

The final pieces, that I think really made the day special were the vintage linens:

and the crystal teacups and platter:

I took my daughter to Goodwill before her party and she picked out the cups and a little tea pot (we forgot to use!). It was totally worth the cost (a $1 each) because they made her and the girls so happy. Real glass! and we will pull them out for special parties again. The linens were all from my mother in law. To add to the festiveness (and save my carpet) I laid one of my tablecloths on the floor underneath the table:

We used the living room coffee table as their tea party table so I didn’t have to have chairs and everyone could reach. It worked out perfectly.

I had a hard time trying to decide what to do for this, I dont’ have a lot of room and we weren’t sure if we could be outside. I cleared our dinning room and planned a bunch of crafts. First up butterflies:

I may have cut out too many. I had glitter glue sticks which were a huge hit with the girls.

Thankfully it also got so nice out that we went outside and blew bubbles and did sidewalk chalk.

Which gave her brother a much needed break from all things girly and pink and gave him a chance to be all boy, and makes some little girls squeal.

I actually have a deep disdain for party favors, yet I do them anyways! I do try make them not all junk though! So each girl got a bag with a bracelet, necklace, bubbles, a cookie, a pencil and these headbands that we made:

In the end it was a great day had by all. She had so much fun! Thankfully we had another party the following week so the decorations got to stay up. After that I used some for PBbaby's 3month photos and gave the rest to a friend for a birthday party.

This is so incredibly pretty and cute!! I'm in the middle of making everything for my baby's first birthday party and now I have a feeling that there will be some hanging paper flowers gracing my craft time along with everything else!